Armor and Blood

but against a steadily improving air-ground defense. JG 52’s III Group lost an entire four-plane flight on an early- morning weather reconnaissance mission, bringing its total of shot-down and written-off aircraft to sixteen out of forty-two since July 5. An initial fuel shortage had expanded to tools and spare parts. A tank jury-rigged by exhausted mechanics could be abandoned if it broke down again. For aircraft, that option was too risky.

More serious was the loss of eleven of the group’s pilots. The German ability to maintain an edge in the air depended on the quality of their aircrew, and Luftwaffe kill ratios were declining with each sortie. Two or three Shturmoviks for one or two fighters was an unsustainable rate of exchange. The five planes lost by VIII Air Corps’s 2nd Stuka Wing was a reminder of the fate of these lumbering aircraft in other theaters, earlier in the war, when used en masse in daylight. The advantage enjoyed by any dive-bomber was its ability to convince everyone under the dive that he personally was the attack’s focal point. In fact, once committed to a dive, the Stuka and any of its relatives were hanging targets. The best chance an antiaircraft crew had was to stick to its guns; the best survival mechanism was to put out rounds. By July 9, the Russians had had enough experience to be convinced, and the Stukas were paying the price.

In the air as well, Russian fighter pilots described their opponents as less willing to take risks and more committed to close escort of the bombers than to the independent sweeps that had proved so costly in Citadel’s early days. In part that reflected increasing fatigue and orders to bring the bombers through. But it also reflected the effective, albeit expensive, crash course in aerial tactics the Luftwaffe had provided the Red Air Force since July 5. Lieutenant Ivan Kozhedub was as yet no match one-on-one for the German Experten. But he scored two victories on July 9 to add to his single kills on July 6 and 7. He would finish the war as the top-scoring Soviet ace with 64 victories. Not every fighter pilot was a Kozhedub- in-waiting. But the careless, the slow learners, and the plain unlucky were gone. The survivors were learning—in particular, how to escort the Shturmovik strikes that harassed and delayed German armor movements all across the southern sector. Air support, so vital to even the limited advances to date, was a diminishing (when not a wasting) asset. As early as July 7, almost half of VIII Air Corps’s combat planes had been assigned to Model’s sector. For July 10, all the medium bombers were also assigned to Model, and a large number of fighters were sent to conduct sweeps over the Soviet airfields supporting the Central Front. That meant that after five days, Manstein and Hoth could count on only a third of the air support originally available—and that was assuming Model’s situation did not suddenly become desperate.

On the ground, Hoth had originally expected XLVIII Panzer Corps to by now be across the Psel and III Panzer Corps to be closing on the right flank of the SS. Instead, both were still fighting their own battles. Pressure against the Fourth Panzer Army’s flanks had increased exponentially as the advance progressed. Hoth was optimistic enough to believe that XLVIII Panzer Corps could in a day or two clear its flank and get across the Psel. He believed Breith was capable of breaking free to support Hausser as intended. But both events were still “Citadel conditional.” Neither Knobelsdorff nor Breith seemed able in practice to get out of his own way. Hoth decided the time had come to throw the switch.

II

That involved persuading Manstein, who still wanted Hoth’s corps to cross the Psel, even if on narrow fronts in separate sectors. That, Manstein asserted, would gain the favorable tank country north of the river and— probably—drive an exploitable wedge between the river line’s defenders and any oncoming reinforcements. Hoth proved persuasive. Sometime between noon and 1:30, Army Order No. 5 was composed and distributed. It described the enemy on the army’s front as making a fighting retreat northward while seeking to hold the line of the Pena River. Fresh motorized forces (the Fifth Guards Tank Army) were advancing west from the Oskol River. For July 10, the Fourth Panzer Army would expand its sector on one flank by driving northeast, on the other by encircling the Russian forces in the bend of the Pena: 3rd Panzer Division’s sector. Specifically, XLVIII Panzer Corps would (“finally!” was strongly implied) finish 6th Guards Tank Corps in the Pena sector while continuing reconnaissance to its north, toward the Psel. The SS mission took only one sentence: Drive the Russians southwest of Prokhorovka eastward, and take the high ground northwest of the town on both sides of the Psel. It did not refer specifically to any new threat from Soviet reserves, but Hausser was already moving in the direction Hoth intended.

An indication of how seriously Hoth took his approach came when at midnight he received an order from Army Group South to support Breith directly by sending a division across the northern Donets. Hoth replied that his orders had been given and it was too late to change them. This was no time to debate details with the commander on the spot, so Manstein let it stand.

It is with these orders that evaluations of German command decisions diverge beyond obvious reconciliation. Historians David Glantz and Jonathan House describe Hoth as “fatally” altering his plans because of the unexpected effectiveness of the Red Army’s defense of the Oboyan sector, compounded by the continuing pressure on Fourth Panzer Army’s flanks. Their supporting data goes back as far as Vatutin’s statement on July 10, making the same point. Soviet staff studies, official histories, and general accounts—not that there was much difference among them in conceptualization and construction—offer the same explanation. It was repeated uncritically in corresponding East German accounts. The interpretation is credible, and it is flattering—a solid combination for official and semiofficial military history in any culture. Its drama can be enhanced by suggesting or implying that the men holding the Oboyan line were at the last ditch, that one more push would have taken the panzers “through mud and blood to the green fields beyond” and put them into the salient’s rear and on the direct route to Kursk. Instead, Hoth and Manstein flinched from the decisive encounter and sought an easier way—which led them onto the killing ground of Prokhorovka and the final ruination of the Third Reich’s hopes.

Exactly what happened at Prokhorovka is the subject of a later chapter. The present importance of the conventional Russian thesis is that it presents the German decision as reactive rather than proactive. But the staff and field officers who discussed the subject in postwar analyses commissioned by the U.S. Army, or in later memoirs and histories, spoke with a common voice in insisting the “Prokhorovka variant” was not an on-the-fly improvisation, and certainly not a consequence of unexpected Soviet fighting power.

Documentary evidence supports the basic German position that the shift in the SS axis of advance manifested forethought. But was Hoth’s timing only a higher-level reaction to the growing mass of Soviet reserves concentrating to the northeast? Were there immediate advantages, any exploitation of “fog and friction,” to be gained by the decision? Neither Hoth nor Manstein discussed the subject in detail—which warrants careful speculation.

To this point, Hoth and Manstein had left the primary conduct of operations to their respective subordinates. But “mission tactics,” to the extent the concept actually existed in the German army, was not a euphemism for command passivity. Neither Fourth Panzer Army nor Army Group South had achieved anything like effective maneuvering room. On the material side, reports from Hoth’s subordinates combined optimism in principle with specific frustration at the effectiveness of the defense and the slow pace of the advance. Fourth Panzer Army’s loss/recovery/repair figures for armored fighting vehicles by July 11 were favorable on the surface. Over 450 remained operational. As of July 11, total losses amounted to only 116. The balance, another 450, were in varying stages of repair. But the cumulative statistics also indicated that a good number of tanks and assault guns had been damaged more than once—and this was only the initial stage of the battle.

In the matter of reinforcements, on July 9 Manstein again asked Zeitzler to inform Hitler that Citadel’s outcome depended on using XXIV Panzer Corps. Hitler agreed to the formation’s concentration near Kharkov, but it remained a high command reserve under the Fuhrer’s direct control. By this time, the corps contained three divisions: SS Wiking, and 17th and 23rd Panzer. Its commander, Walther Nehring, was first-rate; the corps included almost two hundred AFVs and, no less important in Citadel’s context, thirteen battalions of panzer grenadiers.

Whether the corps could have arrived in time or if it would have made a difference if it had remains debatable. On the one hand, its presence might have enabled resting exhausted units and supporting a final drive, whether from Oboyan or Prokhorovka. On the other hand, given the Red Army’s potential for reinforcing Vatutin, committing XXIV Panzer Corps might merely have shoveled coal on a fire. In either case, the question was moot